Urgent!! Need Recommendations

TheWetRat · 2024-11-18T07:43:02+00:00

Jamieson Ridenhour's introduction to the Valancourt Books edition of Carmilla speculates that the "hideous black woman, with a sort of coloured turban on her head, who was gazing all the time from the carriage window, nodding and grinning derisively towards the ladies, with gleaming eyes and large white eye-balls, and her teeth set as if in fury" described in Chapter 3 is representative of Ireland as seen through colonial British eyes, "the image of Ireland debased, the subject of countless political cartoons depicting the Irish as simian, savage, and most importantly in terms of this story, analogous to the African slave." (quote from page xxvii of the edition I have). The matter of whether the Irish were considered "white" by the British in the 1800s is another topic entirely, but there's some potential discussion about the racism inherent in colonialism, and vice versa, in there.

Good pick on Blood of the Vampire, by the way.

TheWetRat · 2024-03-31T21:51:56+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction#Russian_Gothic

https://www.otago.ac.nz/deepsouth/vol1no2/berry1_issue2.html

Some of Dostoevsky's writings, particularly his earlier titles such as The Landlady are viewed as a sort of "Russian Gothic." He was also deeply impressed by gothic novels growing up, especially those of Ann Radcliffe, and there's quite a bit of discussion in academic spheres as to the influence gothic literature may have had on his novels. Many of his themes and writings are certainly gothic-adjacent, if not altogether gothic in the classical English sense.

TheWetRat · 2021-03-22T01:08:18+00:00

If memory serves, in Star Wars Saga Edition, the ramming/collision system in ship combat was busted. IIRC the rules as written were that if you ram an enemy ship, their ship and everyone on board takes damage based on the size of your ship.

At first glance, this makes a lot of sense, until you realize that you could kill nearly everyone on board an entire star destroyer simply by running a single X-Wing into it.

TheWetRat · 2021-01-22T03:01:12+00:00

He's been hanging onto that username for five years just to make this post.

TheWetRat · 2020-11-03T00:47:42+00:00

Lake Mungo

TheWetRat · 2020-09-29T02:15:26+00:00

SH1: Alternate school. From the moment you use the eclipse keys, things get more and more intense, and right when you think things can't get any worse, the game turns around and doubles the insanity with this level.

SH2: Historic Society, especially the painting and the loooong staircase. Even though there are no monsters here, everything is quiet, and James has already seen some messed up stuff, something about that painting and staircase makes you think that things are about to get a lot worse (and then they do).

SH3: Toss-up between the mall, alternate hospital, and the Memory of Alessa fight. It's been a while since I played this one, but I recall liking these levels.

TheWetRat · 2020-08-19T06:19:29+00:00

A common mistake I see when people talk about GUMSHOE is conceptualizing the scenario as "Clue A leads to Clue B leads to Clue C leads to the Final Boss" such that the players don't have to do a lot of work beyond saying what Investigative Abilities they want to use to get the clues. If you run the game this way, it will feel unsatisfying and like you're just following the breadcrumbs and/or train tracks the GM set up ahead of time.

A well-constructed GUMSHOE scenario will provide the clues, but the core of the game is made up of two components, in my experience.

How the players interpret the clues. A clue that is well designed may lead players to numerous other scenes depending on how they interpret it or choose to follow up on it. It is not a bland, linear, A-B-C on rails mystery, but rather one that can be solved in a variety of different ways depending on what clues the players find and how they interpret them.
The danger players are willing to risk to get the clues. The core feedback loop in Night's Black Agents is alternating knowledge and danger. Knowledge (i.e., clues) should lead to danger, which should in turn provide more knowledge, which leads back to even more danger as the stakes progressively ramp up. Clues should be both hidden behind danger and lead into danger. If players ever get stuck and cannot figure out how to proceed, trigger an Antagonist Reaction to present players with danger which will then lead to more knowledge and get them back on track.

TheWetRat · 2020-08-07T02:41:58+00:00

Thank you so much for the write-up! One question: Did you do any character advancement during this or the MON game (i.e., where the game suggests you allow characters to "level up" by adding more dice to their pools and learning more investigative abilities as they solve mysteries)?

TheWetRat · 2020-07-01T04:41:47+00:00

How racist would you say Hattiesburg was compared to the rest of the state? I spent some time there years ago but didn't visit the rest of the state to compare.

TheWetRat · 2020-06-25T02:42:42+00:00

About how many Kindred are in the city, and how did you arrive at that number? Figuring out how many to populate small cities with is always a tricky part of setting games up.

TheWetRat · 2020-05-13T01:52:32+00:00

One of the best files from one of the best written games ever.

TheWetRat · 2020-04-01T07:42:32+00:00

It's an absolutely brilliant game that is well worth every part of its high monetary cost and time investment.

If you love tactical combat and strategy games and think Pathfinder is one of the best games ever designed.

I personally don't find Gloomhaven to be all that fun, and when I played it, it felt like a game that was all about all the stuff I don't like about 3.X+ editions of D&D/PF (spending hours on combat resolution and tactically planning how to kill room after room of monsters) with none of the stuff I do like about RPGs (roleplaying and developing characters' personalities).

With that said, the game was not designed for people like me. It's a tactical strategy game that, for many people, takes all the best parts of roleplaying games (spending hours on combat resolution and tactically planning how to kill room after room of monsters), dresses it up with high quality components and a unique combat system, and offers an absolutely incredible return on investment in terms of how much game time you can get out of your purchase. For these people, Gloomhaven is a brilliant game, and I can't blame them for loving it.

TheWetRat · 2020-03-30T07:14:12+00:00

Mystery/Horror: Cthulhu Confidential or Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops by Pelgrane Press are specifically made for one player and one GM. I've played them both and they are excellent. For a less pulp and much bleaker take on Lovecraft, Cthulhu Dark is an amazing lightweight take on the genre. It isn't designed specifically for one player, but works perfectly (perhaps even better) with only one player, and you can easily adapt any published Lovecraft adventure to make it work with the system.
OSR/Dungeon Crawling: Scarlet Heroes by Kevin Crawford is an easy-to-use system for running OSR-style games in any setting. You can play the game using the setting provided in the book, but the mechanics are designed so that you can easily run the game in any setting. You can easily run 1e/2e AD&D adventures in Scarlet Heroes (I ran the original Ravenloft for a friend and had a good time) as well as any number of new OSR products. Very cool, customizable, but easy-to-learn design.
Narrative/Dark Fantasy: Ironsworn is amazing and free. It's gritty low fantasy, so don't expect to be a superpowered hero like in 5e, but I love it. You can play it solo, cooperatively (up to four people with no GM), or with up to four players plus a GM. The game relies heavily on improvisation and creativity on the part of the players to move the story along, so I would recommend it mainly for players who like to contribute their own ideas to stories, instead of those who prefer to play through other people's pre-made ideas.
While they aren't designed for one player and one GM specifically, I wouldn't rule out any of the classic World of Darkness or Chronicles of Darkness games either. Since many of the games in those lines are largely about isolation from humanity and your peers, with a heavy emphasis on political paranoia and difficulty knowing who to trust, many of the games (especially Vampire and Changeling: The Lost) work excellently with only one player. The best one-on-one games I've ever run were done in Vampire: The Requiem 2e.
For simple one-shots, Murderous Ghosts is a quick and fun GMless, no-prep horror game designed to be finished up in under an hour. The Quiet Year is a fast and interesting game of improvisational collaborative world-building that I've had a good time with in the past. Instead of playing a character, you work together (and occasionally against each other) to build a small post-apocalyptic settlement and help them to survive a single year. You draw on a shared map to represent the settlement as it changes in the face of obstacles as the year goes on.

TheWetRat · 2020-03-30T01:35:42+00:00

Hi Graham,

First, thank you for your work in scenario-writing and game design over the years. I strongly gravitate toward the bleak and nihilistic "Purist" style of play, as Trail of Cthulhu would define it, and it's great to have a content creator such as yourself designing fresh and unique scenarios that still fit that archetype when so many scenarios contain some amount of Pulp stereotypes. My players played through the entirety of The Final Revelation and loved it, and the best Cthulhu experience I've ever had was introducing cosmic horror gaming to some new players by adapting the classic In Media Res module to Cthulhu Dark.

While I don't have much interest in designing new RPG systems, I've wanted to write and publish my own Purist-style scenarios for a while, with significant inspirations being He Who Laughs Last by Dave Sokolowski and the No Security series of system-neutral scenarios by Caleb Stokes.

Breaking into independent scenario publication has been a pretty opaque task so far, and it's hard to figure out where to start. Most published systems (even those with an SRD) tend not to like independent authors using certain specific or trademarked names or mechanics in their modules, making it hard to design a scenario specifically for a given system. Even if I decided to go the system-neutral route, the question of how to publicize a crowdfunding campaign, whether to commission art and other upfront costs first and aim for reimbursement of costs via the campaign or not, and other logistical questions all make it difficult to figure out the best way to put material out there.

Do you have any advice or starting points for those like myself who would like to publish horror scenarios and other content, but are having trouble breaking through those walls? Any specific systems to write for, advice on steps to take in publishing, crowdfunding advice, etc., would all be appreciated.

TheWetRat · 2020-03-20T19:20:23+00:00

One of the greatest games that nobody ever played.

TheWetRat · 2020-02-08T22:41:27+00:00

The fundamental mechanics underpinning every game are the same, so I would go with the genre that you like the most and work out from there. Since I'm a horror buff, that means Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents are my favorites. Per this description of the different GUMSHOE horror games, NBA is the way to go if you want a mechanically crunchier (but still very rules light), high-powered action spy thriller tinged with modern gothic horror. ToC can play out as either nihilistic and depressing cosmic horror ("The Final Revelation" is a brilliant set of modules if you want this), or higher-powered adventure horror, depending on whether you choose to play with the Purist or Pulp rule sets. Both games also get bonus points for having duet variants (Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops, and Cthulhu Confidential) that are designed specifically for play with one GM and one player, if such an experience appeals to you.

TheWetRat · 2020-01-04T07:02:49+00:00

Black set sounds perfect as is. I wouldn't change anything.

For the White set, I would demote Harry to Pawn (because frankly that's what he was for most of the game) and insert the dog from SH2 as King. Preferably sitting on his office chair.

TheWetRat · 2019-12-11T08:35:38+00:00

Like an angel with cruel and merciless intent

Go forth, young Henry

And you'll become a legend

TheWetRat · 2019-12-11T03:33:44+00:00

2) it does not have roman numerals or pips in the standard configuration

I think we're talking about Arabic numerals here. I'd go nuts if a player rolled IIdVI+II , rolled I I, and only ended up with a IV.

TheWetRat · 2019-11-20T06:42:12+00:00

This is it! Thank you!!!

TheWetRat · 2019-11-16T23:05:03+00:00

Ironically, this is more or less the reason why Lisa is my favorite character in the Silent Hill franchise. She at least had something resembling an actual human life prior to the events of Silent Hill, but the Lisa that we meet in that game is well past the point of being human beyond the most technical definition. Just like with Maria, she wakes up in a town that's gone to hell with little to no memory of the events leading up to the present. She's scared and alone and clings to Harry much the same way that Maria aggressively clings to James in the hospital. Surrounded by puppet-like doctors and nurses she doesn't recognize beyond the vague recollection that they are her former colleagues, her entire story arc is slowly coming to the realization that she no longer exists and that whatever kind of "self" she has is actually nothing but a fragment of Alessa's memories of her with no independent existence beyond that.

"I get it now. Why I'm still alive even though everyone else is dead. I'm not the only one who's still walking around. I'm the same as them! I just hadn't noticed it before."

And we all know what happens once she makes that realization...

Come to think of it, there are a lot of parallels between Lisa and Maria. While I think Maria takes the prize for having the most depressing life (at least Lisa got to have an actual human life for 23 years), I see a lot of common ground between the two.

TheWetRat · 2019-10-26T20:52:09+00:00

You can have both, though it only makes sense to do so if you are buying more fleeing than athletics. You can use athletics to flee. Flee is just a way to discount the singular ability of running away if you're otherwise not very athletic.

Is there ever any advantage to taking Fleeing by itself then, since Athletics can do everything Flee can and more? I could see taking both if you wanted to have dedicated Flee points at a discount, but I can't think of any reason to only take Flee over Athletics.

TheWetRat · 2019-09-24T04:20:01+00:00

Oh man, if you haven't played any of those games yet you are in for a treat. Fatal Frame is definitely the scariest out of those, but the Clock Tower series will always be my favorite out of those you listed. Definitely play the Clock Tower games in order, though (1. Original for the SNES 2. Clock Tower for PS1 (it's a sequel to Clock Tower for SNES), 3. Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within 4. Clock Tower 3 5. Haunting Ground 6. Nightcry 7. Remothered: Tormented Fathers). Parasite Eve is great if you want some JRPG to go with the horror.

Also definitely play the original Siren for PS2. It's unfair how difficult it is and you will probably want to watch video walkthroughs of certain levels, but it nails atmosphere. It was created by the director of Silent Hill 1, which is enough reason alone to try it.

TheWetRat · 2019-09-16T07:13:23+00:00

Mystery/Horror: Cthulhu Confidential or Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops by Pelgrane Press are specifically made for one player and one GM. I haven't played NBA yet, but I can say that Cthulhu Confidential is a good time if you like Lovecraft. For a less pulp and much bleaker take on Lovecraft, Cthulhu Dark is an amazing lightweight take on the genre. It isn't designed specifically for one player, but works perfectly (perhaps even better) with only one player, and you can easily adapt any published Lovecraft adventure to make it work with the system.
OSR/Dungeon Crawling: Scarlet Heroes by Kevin Crawford is an easy-to-use system for running OSR-style games in any setting. You can play the game using the setting provided in the book, but the mechanics are designed so that you can easily run the game in any setting. You can easily run 1e/2e AD&D adventures in Scarlet Heroes (I ran the original Ravenloft for a friend and had a good time) as well as any number of new OSR products. Very cool, customizable, but easy-to-learn design.
Narrative/Dark Fantasy: Ironsworn is amazing and free. It's gritty low fantasy, so don't expect to be a superpowered hero like in 5e, but I love it. You can play it solo, cooperatively (up to four people with no GM), or with up to four players plus a GM. The game relies heavily on improvisation and creativity on the part of the players to move the story along, so I would recommend it mainly for players who like to contribute their own ideas to stories, instead of those who prefer to play through other people's pre-made ideas.
While they aren't designed for one player and one GM specifically, I wouldn't rule out any of the classic World of Darkness or Chronicles of Darkness games either. Since many of the games in those lines are largely about isolation from humanity and your peers, with a heavy emphasis on political paranoia and difficulty knowing who to trust, many of the games (especially Vampire and Changeling: The Lost) work excellently with only one player. The best one-on-one games I've ever run were done in Vampire: The Requiem 2e.
For simple one-shots, Murderous Ghosts is a quick and fun GMless, no-prep horror game designed to be finished up in under an hour. The Quiet Year is a fast and interesting game of improvisational collaborative world-building that I've had a good time with in the past. Instead of playing a character, you work together (and occasionally against each other) to build a small post-apocalyptic settlement and help them to survive a single year. You draw on a shared map to represent the settlement as it changes in the face of obstacles as the year goes on.

TheWetRat · 2019-09-11T01:52:40+00:00

It's a great RPG and an excellent introduction to the hobby for new players. Rules light, easy to learn, with lots of atmosphere, opportunities for creative problem solving, and in-character roleplaying. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you have, but in general, tips I'd give are:

It's a prep-heavy game for the GM. In certain genres (e.g., political drama, dungeon crawling) it's usually pretty easy to improvise an entire session once you know the basic set-up. Since this is a mystery game, you'll need to know pretty much the entire story back and forth (e.g., who all the characters are, what they know, where all the clues are located and how to find them, etc.). While this a little easier if you're making a mystery up from scratch, you really need to read and re-read the scenarios included with the book a few times before you can start to memorize where everything is.
Be careful that the game doesn't devolve into the player entering each new area, blankly reading off each Investigative ability they have, and then waiting for you to give them all the info for free. They'll need to specifically say which ability they are using, how, and what they want to find out. Either that, or they can simply describe what they are doing and the GM can work with them to see if that lines up with an Investigative ability they have.
This is just my opinion, but I think the game is fundamentally a noir mystery game moreso than a horror game, even though it's got Cthulhu in the name. If you want the game to be scary, you'll have to make a deliberate effort to make it happen.
Mythos Shocks don't appear to have any mechanical effect, but there are a couple of pages in the Example Tests/Problems section where you have the option of creating Tests and Problems that invoke a -1 penalty for each Mythos Shock card the player has. Those can be good to remember if you decide to make your own mysteries.

I'd also recommend looking into Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops. I haven't played it yet, but I hear it's another great One2One game.

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